The title, an ironic allusion to the erotic best seller by Erika Leonard James that is currently the most sold book ever, came instinctively and with a hint of fun thinking about what, at first glance, unites the work of the two artists, while the number indicates all the shades of grey that the human eye can perceive.

“The title came not only spontaneously and with a touch of irony” states the curator, “but I liked the idea that it would make a contrast to the two regal and refined titles used for the previous two exhibitions, Regio and Reginae, being on the one hand recognisable and banal like most things that attract society today, and on the other disorientating, just like the works of the two artists. So, my reflection on the canvases and the dialogue to be established between Stassi and Sartori Braido continued with the book in mind: the coldness of certain settings and embraces, the artificiality or surrealism of the dialogues and especially the sense of control and obsessive-fetishist attention of the protagonist. Attention which I find both in the quest for variation of colour and in the interest for the object/detail. Given that the sad, silent and often funereal side of their production has been highlighted more than once, I would now like to look into the innermost layers of the surface, into all those deposits that have formed the skin over the white canvas and among all those elements that give life to a quiet but teeming archaeology of experience”.

“My work features enigmatic figures with an artificial and inhuman appearance, placed inside gelid spaces without atmosphere, with clear references to computerised graphics, giving everything a deep feeling of melancholy – that’s how Giovanni Sartori Braido talks about his work – The subjects are taken from all sorts of sources: old photographs, school encyclopaedias, magazines as well as cinema and television. They are fragments of forgotten images from different times and settings and resurrected from their oblivion, then set down as if from the memory of an out-of-control computer that is incapable of perceiving their nature”.

“When I think about painting I think of archaeology in the sense of silence, immobility and waiting, of restitution and return to light. These are the things that I seek in my work and I believe that they are some of the elements that make up the actual essence of painting - maintains Vito Stassi – I try to overcome the concept of actuality, taken as representation of what exists today, in order to pursue a timeless and universal dimension. Painting lives a dogmatic dimension of its own. A dimension that lies beyond reason and the purely logical representation of things. Not by chance is there a moment in painting when it is the painting itself that acts, that takes its own direction. Every previous intention and idea will ‘fail’, will be diverted”.